By now my SeaRey has flown more than 1,000 hours,
and I'm still loving every minute of it.

Here's a little video that might give you some idea of how much fun
it
is: "SeaRey Flying." (If
you'd like to watch the video more than once, please save it on your
computer instead of downloading it again every time. And please don't post
the
video file anywhere else, because it's copyrighted (2009 by
Donald
Maxwell) and the music track is copyrighted by a litigious
conglomerate.)

I've posted several more SeaRey videos to YouTube. You can
find them on my YouTube
channel.

I was a beta-tester of Dynon's new autopilot. Here's their
thank
you note--a 20" x 26" painting printed on poster board:

They painted the airplane based mainly on this photo of it taken in
June, 2008, at Killarney, Ontario on the north shore of the Georgian
Bay:

Update--24 October 2003

I'm having too much fun flying my SeaRey to revise this "building"
page
now. But here's what it looks like these days, with 107.4
hours
of
flying time on the Hobbes meter:

Building a SeaRey

This is a log of my efforts to build a SeaRey--a small, two-place
amphibious flying boat--from a kit produced by Progressive
Aerodyne,
Inc., of Orlando, Florida.

How did I get into this (folly)?

About five years ago, on a whim, I bought a copy of Kitplanes
magazine at Borders. That night I was lying in bed leafing
through it and came upon an article about a little amphibious
flying
boat airplane called a SeaRey. Suddenly I had a moment of
clarity--they don't come often, so I try to pay attention to them.

I saw a grassy lawn sloping up from a lake. My view was
from
the water, and I saw a beautiful SeaRey taxiing up out of the
water
onto the grass, paint brilliant in the sun, and I was conscious of
a
house just out of sight to the left.

In that instant I knew where The Perfect Place was, not literally
where, but what kind of place, the situation.
And
I
knew that it was time to take flying lessons again. I had
soloed
38
years earlier, but then had given it up, gone dutifully back to
college,
married, raised a family, and gone to work every day. Oh,
sure,
I'd
lived in several other countries along the way and had done a few
things
that some people find exotic. But mainly I'd been a fairly
conventional
husband, father, college teacher. I hadn't been a
pilot.
And
I didn't know what I might do if I ever truly grew up.
Suddenly,
it
was all clear--for a second or two. Then the moment, with
the
vision
of that lawn and the amphibian, faded, and I was still in bed,
with a
full
day of classes coming up in a few hours.

But the vision--I won't capitalize it; it's a small, personal
one--the vision has persisted. Sometimes it's been hard to
keep
in mind, especially when the World gets in the way, as it
does.
But so far I'm managed to keep in clear in my head. And now
I'm
building one of the things.

The kit arrived in June 2000. It's now September,
2002.
During that summer I made reasonable progress and got the fuselage
mostly finished before the fall semester began and I had to
concentrate
on work instead
of play. That was mostly it until the following summer,
2001.
I got the fuselage mostly finished by fall, except for the
electrical system.

I retired from my college teaching job at the end of the fall,
semester, and have had somewhat more time to work on the SeaRey.
The electrical system, including the instrument panel, is
complete. The engine is installed, and I've run it several
times.
Now the wings are covered and ready for painting. When
that's done, it will be time to move the whole shebang to the
airport
and do the final assembly, the weight and balance, a few other
things,
and call the FAA inspector.

I've been keeping a construction logbook that details
everything. It's a real book, however. I'll
just
hit the highlights here.

The kit came in two boxes on an 18-wheeler. Here's the
larger
one, 16 feet long. With no family forklift we had to open it
on
the truck and unload it part by part.

I'd built a "hangar" by enclosing a deck with plastic pipe and
6-mil
polyethelyne. It might be just big enough...

That's son Chris at the far end and the fiberglass Turtledeck on
the
bench.

There are many, many parts. And an instruction
book.

The rest of the story comes on separate pages. --WILL come
when I
get to it. I'm nearly finished with the construction, but
far
behind on posting these pages.

If you're interested in the SeaRey, you might enjoy these
enthusiastic articles: